From the matchmaking event in Yizhuang to the debate arena in Hangzhou: 36Kr has handed over a genuine AI-related question to the young generation.

In May this year, at the Tongming Lake Convention and Exhibition Center in Yizhuang, Beijing.

At the 2026 AI Partner · Beijing Yizhuang AI + Industry Conference hosted by 36Kr, a distinctive "World Café" AI + Industry Matching Session was held: 13 demand-side representatives came with real scenarios, real budgets and real pain points, while 36 technology-side teams brought their solutions for docking. With precise matching before the session and efficient interaction during the event, cooperation can be realized in a shorter path.

This is the most front-line session under the theme of "Heading to the Frontline with AI" of the conference.

As Feng Dagang, CEO of 36Kr, said in his opening speech: "When most people walk into the Tongming Lake Convention and Exhibition Center, they are thinking about the same thing — they are not here to hear how powerful AI is, but to see whether AI can be applied in practice, how to apply it, how much it costs, and what value it can create." A representative from a participating enterprise put it more directly: "In the past, when we attended AI conferences, everyone was still discussing 'what can be done in the future'. Today in Yizhuang, everyone is directly asking 'can your solution reduce the cost of my production line by 10%'."

Both the supply side and the demand side were present at the scene, with sincerity and practical problems.

However, it is exactly at such a matching scene that a structural mismatch keeps emerging: many traditional enterprises traveled a long way to find solutions, but could not clearly describe their business pain points or state their transformation goals; service providers came with mature technologies, but could not find scenarios that are truly suitable for landing implementation.

The very existence of this matching session proves how common this kind of mismatch is — If supply and demand could match naturally, there would be no need for anyone to specially build such a platform.

Faced with the mismatch, who will take the first step?

The problem is clear, but there are two different views on the attribution.

One school holds that the root cause lies in the supply side. AI solutions are not closely aligned with the industry, because service providers are too far away from the front line. No matter how strong the general capabilities are, without understanding the production scheduling logic of the workshop, the inventory turnover of stores, and the real cost structure of a manufacturing enterprise, the solutions will always stay in the PPT. Therefore, priority should be given to urging AI service providers to sink deeper — to immerse themselves in industrial scenarios, so that technologies adapt to the industry instead of the industry accommodating technologies.

The other school argues that the root cause lies in the demand side. If enterprises can't even figure out their own needs, no matter how deeply service providers sink, they will shoot in the dark. Digital transformation is not just about buying a set of tools, but first clarifying which part of the business needs to be transformed, what the transformation should look like, and what indicators to use for measurement. Without clear demand sorting, even the most mature technology will fail to adapt to the local context. Therefore, priority should be given to guiding traditional enterprises to sort out their digital transformation needs — define their own problems clearly before discussing what AI can do.

Both judgments make sense, and each leads to a completely different industrial path: one is that technologies move closer to scenarios, and the other is that scenarios open up to technologies. Who takes action first and how they act determines the transformation rhythm of a large number of traditional industries in the AI era.

At that time, Hangzhou Yanko Education Technology, the organizer of the Future Voice World Youth Debate Competition, was also at the conference site and participated in two roundtable forums. One has long been engaged in industry matching, and the other has long been committed to youth critical thinking. The two sides stopped to ponder over the same question:

No single matching session can give a standard answer to this question on the spot. It is worthy of a real debate.

Therefore, 36Kr brings this question to the critical thinking arena

This time, 36Kr decides to hand over the real problems from the front line of industrial matching to young people for in-depth discussion.

At the 4th Future Voice World Youth Debate Competition, 36Kr, as the Co-Presenter of the Debate Topic, jointly presented this question of the AI Era with Future Voice: To promote the AI transformation of traditional industries, priority should be given to urging AI service providers to sink and adapt to industrial scenarios / guiding traditional enterprises to sort out their digital transformation needs

This is not an imaginative question about the distant future, but a divergent question that is happening right now. It is unfolding every day in industrial matching sessions, in the meeting rooms of enterprise digital transformation, and at the delivery sites of service providers — Yizhuang in May this year is one of such sites.

For the young debaters participating in the competition, there is no shortcut to win this question by relying on hot search topics. Standing on the pro side, they need to explain how technologies can truly understand the industry; standing on the con side, they need to explain how enterprises can truly understand themselves. Both sides must step into real scenarios and see the reasons behind different choices — this is exactly the meaning of critical thinking: Form your own judgment when there is no standard answer for the problem.

Solve "immediate matching" in Yizhuang, discuss "future choices" in Hangzhou

From Yizhuang to Hangzhou, these two events are essentially one and the same.

The platform built by 36Kr in Yizhuang solves the immediate needs: it brings demand-side and technology-side representatives face to face, so that cooperation can be realized in a shorter path. The platform built by Future Voice in Hangzhou faces the future: it allows young people who have not yet entered the industry to step into these real scenarios in advance, and think clearly about how they will enter the world rewritten by AI.

Media records changes, young people discuss choices. This is also the original intention of the collaboration between 36Kr and Future Voice: turn the problems observed on the front line into topics that young people can discuss in depth.

The current Future Voice World Youth Debate Competition has set up a total of five "Questions of the AI Era". In addition to the industrial transformation question brought by 36Kr, there are also front-line questions from four fields: community, hardware, AIGC, and recruitment — Guanchazha asks about the foundation of developers in the AI Coding era, Rokid discusses the boundary between smart hardware and human beings, TapNow faces up to the relationship between AIGC and creativity, and TTC focuses on the certainty and possibility in young people's career choices. Five fields, five scenes, five questions.

From August 20 to 23, 2026, at the Wulin Star Expo Center in Hangzhou, 24 teams selected from more than 100 participating teams through layers of competition will meet in the offline final. These questions derived from the real world will also be discussed in depth here.

Critical thinking in the AI era is not only about discussing where technology will lead mankind, but also a process in which young people actively decide where they want to go.

The power of words leads the future. See you in Hangzhou.